A Tarantula Mauled This Snake to Death, And Scientists Have Never Seen Anything Like It

Rekt.

BEC CREW

10 JAN 2017

Scientists have published the first known account of a wild tarantula killing and eating a snake, and every part of it is actual nightmare fuel.

While spiders have been known to kill snakes in the past, this particular species of tarantula doesn’t produce venom, which means it would have subdued the snake by mashing at its flesh with its fangs to expose its insides, before liquifying everything for easy digestion.

The grisly encounter was discovered by grad student Leandro Malta Borges, from the Federal University of Santa Maria in Brazil.

Borges and his colleagues were out in the Serra do Caverá region of southern Brazil looking for tarantulas as part of a research project, when they stumbled on a large Grammostola quirogai tarantula huddled under a rock, grasping a snake just below its head.

The Almaden ground snake (Erythrolamprus almadensis) stretched to almost 40 cm (15 inches), making it surprisingly large prey for the tarantula to wrangle.